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This Privacy Policy governs the collection and use of information provided by you to the Times Publishing Company (“the Times”) through your use of the websites we own and operate, including www.tampabay.com, www.sptimes.com, www.politifact.com and www.tbt.com. This Privacy Policy does not apply to any information you provide to us in other ways, such as by mail, telephone, or at a live event or physical business location. This policy also does not apply to any information provided to or obtained by our newsroom personnel, including writers of news articles and editorial columns. PLEASE READ THIS POLICY CAREFULLY.

By using our websites, you agree that your uses are governed by this Policy and all other Terms and Conditions of Use concerning these sites. If you do not agree to be bound, please refrain from using our sites. If you have questions regarding our Privacy Policy, you should direct them to

TYPES OF INFORMATION WE COLLECT: In general, we collect two categories of information: (1) information that personally identifies you (for example, your name and address) that you voluntarily supply when you register for an on-line discussion or other site use, or when you subscribe, order, complete a survey, or initiate some other transaction, and (2) non-personally identifying information, which includes information about usage patterns and preferences as users navigate around our sites or use our information services. In some cases, an agent, affiliate, or business partner of the Times collects the information. Third party providers featured on our sites, such as vendors of products and services offered through our sites, may be gathering the same kinds of information.

WE DO NOT SELL THE NAMES, EMAIL ADDRESSES, OR OTHER PERSONAL INFORMATION YOU ENTER ON OUR SITES TO ANY THIRD PARTIES, INCLUDING ADVERTISERS, UNLESS WE HAVE YOUR PERMISSION TO DO SO, SUCH AS THROUGH A REGISTRATION FOR A CONTEST, SURVEY, OR PARTICULAR SERVICES OR INFORMATION. DETAILS ARE FOUND BELOW.

REGISTRATION INFORMATION: To use some of the features and services on our sites, you will need to register for them and provide certain information as part of the registration process. Third party advertisers on our site may offer you opportunities to receive information, participate in a survey, or receive other goods or communications from them. We may also ask for information from those who buy products or services or conduct other transactions on our sites. (For example, you may be asked for your name, email address, age, zip code or credit card number for certain kinds of transactions, and you may be asked about your interests in various topics, such as sports or leisure activities, or topics of interest to people in certain professions.) Information you provide will help us offer you more personalized features, make our sites more useful to you, and process e-commerce transactions. Supplying such information is entirely voluntary on your part. If you do not wish to supply the information requested either by us or an advertiser, you are free to decline to do so, but please understand we or the advertiser may then be unable to provide you with the services or opportunities you want. When you register, you are agreeing that we (or the advertiser with which you register) may use your information to contact you for customer service, to inform you of changes or additions to our sites or services offered, and to send you any administrative notices or other information relevant to your use of our sites.

EMAIL ALERTS AND NEWSLETTERS: We may offer you opportunities to subscribe to email alerts and newsletters concerning topics we believe might interest you. If you have opted to receive a particular alert or newsletter, you can always unsubscribe later. See “Opting Out” below.

MOBILE MESSAGING SERVICES: We will use information collected from your interaction with our Mobile Messaging Services for the purposes of delivering, developing and improving those services. We will not sell, rent, or provide that information to third parties, except to the extent required by law, without your consent. The practices of your wireless carrier and other service providers concerning information derived from SMS messaging are governed by their own privacy policies, which we do not control.

CONTESTS AND OTHER PROMOTIONS: From time to time, we or our advertisers may offer contests, sweepstakes, giveaways, or other promotions on our sites. If you enter one of these, you will be asked to provide information about yourself such as your name, address, telephone number and email address so that we or our advertisers can contact you if you win. We may share this information with our corporate affiliates and any co-sponsors of the contest, sweepstakes, give-away, or other promotion. (Co-sponsors will be identified in the official rules applicable to the promotion.) If you do not want us to collect the information requested, to use it to contact you, or to share it, please do not enter any contest, sweepstakes, give-away or promotion.

ON-LINE CHATS, PHOTOS, VIDEOS, COMMENTS and other USER GENERATED CONTENT: If you participate in chat, post a comment on a news story, a blog, or in one of our other forums or guest books, your comments will be public because those comments will be published to the Web. If you sign your comments or include any personal information in them, that information will become public. Protect your own privacy by not posting personal information, such as your phone number, in a chat or comment. Of course, any photo, video or other visual or audio-recorded matter you upload, post, or otherwise submit to any of our sites that accept such submissions will also become public when posted to the Web. We do not edit user-generated content, nor do we remove user-posted material unless we, in our sole discretion, deem it unsuitable for continued publication.

SHOPPING: We make various kinds of shopping opportunities available through our web sites. When you make a purchase through one of our sites, either we or a third-party order fulfillment service will ask you for contact details and billing information. You may also be asked for unique identifiers such as your date of birth for identity confirmation purposes. We will use this information to process your transaction and to contact you regarding your purchase. Our third party fulfillment services will have access to this information as well to facilitate the transaction. We will not sell or rent your personal billing information to anyone, but if you consent (by checking a box or similar method) we may make your basic contact information available to third parties so that they, or we, can contact you directly concerning other products or services that may be of interest.

LINKS TO THIRD PARTY WEBSITES. We cannot control the privacy policies of sites we may link to in our editorial coverage or advertising sections. Therefore, if you provide personal information, including credit card information, to linked third-party sites, the information is stored on their servers and is governed by their privacy policies. We ask sites with which we have a business relationship to prominently show a link to their privacy policies. This allows you to determine how your personal information might be used by them. Please review these privacy policies and contact the web site operator if you have questions or concerns about them.

IMPORTANT NOTICE ABOUT CHILDREN’S PRIVACY: Children need to obtain permission from their parents before providing any information about themselves to anyone via the Internet. This includes us. If you are under 13, please do not provide us with any personally identifying information about yourself (names, email addresses, physical addresses, or telephone numbers). We will not knowingly collect personally identifying information about anyone under the age of 13 unless we have verified consent of the child’s parent or guardian prior to collection. If we learn we have collected such information without proper consent of an actual parent or guardian, we will delete that information as quickly as possible.

OPTING OUT: If you register with us, or subscribe to alerts or newsletters, you will have the opportunity to review, update or delete the information you provided us at any time (except information we did not store in the first place), and to unsubscribe to any alerts or newsletters you have asked for (for example, by clicking on the “unsubscribe” link in an email). If you remove registration information you have provided, you probably will not be able to continue to use the service requiring that registration. If you wish to opt out of receiving notices, information or other contacts, or any other communication or service, please contact us using the information at the location where you previously registered or subscribed.

If you have submitted your information on a page connected to one of our third party business affiliates or advertisers, the information you submit may be maintained jointly by us and that entity. If you “opt out” on our site, you may need to contact the third party business affiliate or advertiser separately to request that it remove your information from its database.

COOKIES: Our sites use "cookies," an element of data sent and stored on your computer, a unique random number that acts as a “user ID.” The cookie does not personally identify the actual user of our sites, just the computer that a visitor uses to access our sites. Unless you voluntarily identify yourself -- as with registration for a product or service -- we will not know who you are, even if a cookie is assigned to your computer. We use cookies in the following ways: in site administration, to complete a user's requested activity, to perform analysis, and for research and development. Our advertisers and third parties providing goods and services through our sites may also assign their own cookies, a process we do not and cannot control. However, a cookie cannot read unrelated information from your hard drive. Cookies merely help tailor websites to better suit your interests. You can set most browsers not to accept cookies if you want to, but you may not be able to access personalized features of our sites if you do, or you may be subjected to the same ad repeatedly during a single visit to one of our sites. Whether to set your browser to accept cookies is completely up to you.

This Web site uses services provided by AP News Registry. AP News Registry collects content usage information and may use cookies in conjunction with this activity. Your continued readership of Tampabay.com means you accept the privacy policy of the AP News Registry. Please refer to the AP News Registry privacy policy at http://www.apnewsregistry.com/privacycenter/servicepolicy.aspx for further information.

OTHER INFORMATION: Our servers automatically collect some basic information about your computer configuration, including the type of browser and operating system you use, the resolution of your monitor, the web site that referred you, and your IP address. (Your IP address is the numerical address of the computer connected to the Internet, used to transmit requested data, such as the web page you want to view. It does not tell us who you are. It just identifies the computer being used.) We use IP addresses for systems administration purposes, to deliver our web pages to you, to tailor our ads to the interests of our users, and to measure traffic within our site. To improve our sites’ interest and usefulness to users, we may send non-personally identifying information to ad networks displaying ads on our sites.

THIRD-PARTY AD SERVERS: We also use third-party advertising companies to serve ads when you visit our websites. The third-party advertising technology we employ uses information derived from your visits to target advertising within our sites. In addition, our advertisers may use other third-party advertising technology to target advertising on our sites and on other sites. In the course of advertisements being served to you, a unique third-party cookie or cookies may be placed on your browser. In addition, we may use Web beacons (also called action tags, pixel tags or clear gifs) provided by third-party advertising companies, to help manage and optimize our advertising. Web beacons enable us to recognize a browser’s cookie when a browser visits one of our sites, and to learn which banner ads bring users to our sites. You may “opt out” of this technology: http://www.networkadvertising.org/consumer/opt_out.asp

AGGREGATED AND STATISTICAL INFORMATION: While we do not share personally identifiable information about you with our advertisers except as described above, we do aggregate information you provide with data from other users and provide pools of information about our users to our advertisers, in order to make them aware of the audiences our sites reach. For example, we may tell advertisers how many of our users are male or female or live in a certain zip code. We may tell advertisers about the habits and preferences of our users using this type of aggregated or statistical information about traffic to, from and within our sites as well.

OTHER DISCLOSURES: We may release information about our users to law enforcement or to others when necessary to comply with laws, to enforce our Terms of Service, or to protect our users, customers, or company from threats of harm.

SECURITY: In some areas of our site, including our Classified Ads sections, you might provide additional personal information such as an address, when transacting business. You might enter a credit card number to purchase a product or service. We have safeguards such as encryption, designed to prevent access to the personal information about you that is stored on our computers. However, like all Web site operators, we cannot safeguard completely against illegal activities undertaken by third parties.

CHANGES TO OUR POLICY: We may change and update our Privacy Policy from time to time to address evolving business needs. Any such changes will go into effect when posted. Visit this location regularly for any updates that may concern you.